The computerization of financial work has progressed in recent years, and the demand is increasing for conversion from the paper bankbooks which are used in banks to electronic cards. IC cards and optical cards are proposed as cards which can correspond to these sorts of demands. IC cards, as is known, are ones in which IC chips including semiconductor memory are arranged in predetermined regions upon a card base board made of resin, and they combine both high security characteristics and also potential capacity several times or more that of magnetic stripes; and, on the other hand, optical cards are ones in which an optical storage medium is disposed in stripe form or rectangular form upon a card base board made of resin, and, while they have low security characteristics, the feature is outstanding that they can ensure storage capacities in units of megabytes. Furthermore, recently, various proposals have been made for hybrid type cards in which IC chips and an optical storage medium are disposed in combination on the same card base board, in order to make the most of the beneficial features of them both more efficiently.
In the conversion from paper bankbooks to electronic cards, not only high security characteristics, but also the absolute accuracy of the recorded detailed bankbook information which includes a history of transactions must be ensured. That is to say, because the customer cannot in any way tamper with the detailed bankbook information once it has been recorded, a paper bankbook functions as a certificate which is objective evidence of the transaction history of cash depositing and payment and the like; and, furthermore, as an original, it also functions as a security for evidence ability. Accordingly, it is necessary for these functions also to be supported by a electronic card, and there should be no possibility of rewriting the detailed bankbook information which has been stored on the various storage mediums. Accordingly, it is necessary for the recording medium upon the card base plate which is to be used as an electronic bankbook to be of a non rewritable category, such as an optical storage medium of the write-once type.
From a different angle, it often happens recently that the same person carries a plurality of cash cards and/or money transfer cards. Further, the number of paper bankbooks and the number of transaction slips on which detailed bankbook information is printed increase along with the increase of card transactions. However, since a considerable cost is entailed when producing these cards, paper bankbooks, and transaction slips, the burden of expense to the banks is immense. On the other hand, for the customers as well, carrying a plurality of cards, paper bankbooks, and the like becomes inconvenient from the management point of view. Accordingly, it would be convenient from the point of view of the bank and also from the point of view of the customer if it were possible to combine into one card the functions of this plurality of cards and paper bankbooks, but in the prior art nothing has existed which has combined the functions of such a plurality of cards, due to the above described restrictions related to the storage medium and also due to the diversity of detailed bankbook information and the increasing amount thereof and the like. As described above, in the conversion from paper bankbooks to electronic cards, the implementation of the combination together of the functions of several cards has been extremely difficult, even independently of the fact that the demands of society are high, due to the existence of problems such as those described below, mainly in the way in which the detailed bankbook information should be recorded upon the cards.
(1) With IC cards, the above described stable security characteristic can be planned for, and moreover they have the beneficial feature that since the storage regions are constituted by semiconductor memory the recording and the reading out of information can be performed at high speed; but the down side is that the recording capacity of low cost cards is insufficient even for just simply recording the detailed bankbook information, and high capacity cards have the defect that the production cost becomes high. As described above, when considering the point that it should be impossible to tamper with the detailed bankbook information (which must not be done) and also the point that it is necessary to issue bankbooks in large amounts, the cost rapidly becomes high when using IC cards as electronic bankbooks, and cannot be said to be practicable.
(2) Further, with optical storage mediums, although it is possible to obtain high capacity ones at comparatively low cost, it is normal to perform the management of the recorded information based upon management information within the optical storage medium, without distinction of rewritable type and write-once type.
Due to this, if the quantity of the detailed bankbook information which is recorded is great, a long time period is required for referring thereto. Further, with the write-once type, there is the problem that recording capacity is expended uselessly when correcting the addresses or the like which serve as the keys for searching.
(3) Magnetic stripes are cheap in cost in correspondence with their low recording capacity, but are limited in their application to use for specified transactions, and by themselves are not suitable for service as electronic bankbooks.
(4) At least at the present moment, for cash cards and the like, proud-indented portions (embossing) are essential for displaying specific letters, digits, and symbols for personalization of these cards. However, the positions for the regions for formation (engraving) of this embossing are limited to specific regions of the card, and moreover they occupy wide areas. For this reason, it has not been possible to combine a plurality of storage mediums upon the same card base board with currently existing card layouts. In particular, with optical cards which have an optical storage medium, even forming this embossing has been an impossibility.